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January Marriage is a mess now. The problem is it’s just too straight-acting. Heterosexual, bisexual, and homosexual people, and those who don’t identify as any of these, need to apply their best thinking and abilities to fantasize beyond what our culture’s taught us in order to transform marriage into a healing experience for those who choose to tie that knot. LGBT people should be better at this. They’ve already challenged the straight role by admitting they don’t love according to its dominant model. They just have to put the freedom this gives them to good use to repair, not worship, a failing idol. Then they’ll go further in challenging how straightness confines marriage to a consumer-driven, role-laden, patterned, often inhuman, interaction. And there are many heterosexual people who are anxious to join a movement for real improvement of their marriages. To heal marriage we must, it seems, make marriage less desperate. We must no longer consider marriage a norm for human relationships, human fulfillment, and personal wholeness. The straight role teaches that those who are married are straighter than those who grow old without interest in it -- What’s “wrong” with such people? Is it pathological? Someone who doesn’t aspire to this “great,” “normal,” “natural,” “basic building block of society,” is just plain queer, the role says. Why, they’re anti-American. Pressure from everywhere is overwhelming to make marriage a desperate need for feeling right and successful. The more desperate the need is felt, the more things can be sold to get the right partner, make it work, fix the problems involved, and keep retail flowing. Politicians spend a lot of time proving they’re devoted to straight-acting marriage. Dick Cheney promotes it even with a lesbian daughter. Those most likely to punish others for not having their “values” use their straight-acting family members as a front to get elected while their real lives model hypocrisy toward the vote-getting ideal. High paid sports figures, who for some reason are expected to be role models, must promote straight-acting marriage in their own lives as if they have the psychological credentials to model relationships. It’s part of their image, identified with the brand name for their business as a cult idol and product endorser. Religions enforce straight-acting marriage with rewards here and in an afterlife. They demonize LGBT people for wanting in on the straight institution. They reward straightness in families constantly. Singles in most religious institutions feel it. These institutions try to respond with “singles ministries,” an admission that their regular activities leave singles out. It’s one more missionary thrust to appeal to outsiders. Religious words like “family” invoke a straight-acting model. When we hear “family values,” we are to picture automatically one where the man and the woman conform to gender roles -- a white family, at that. No matter how bad things are, religions teach that “God will get you through.” I assume, till you’re relieved of the problems, and rewarded for any suffering, by making it to heaven. What’s taught is that marriage is the really big solution to most emotional problems, problems more people around us have then we’d like to admit. So, don’t get therapy; get married. Loneliness? If you don’t marry, you’ll end up alone in the world with no one really there for you, while everyone else has someone special. Value? If you don’t marry, it’s proof that no one thinks you’re worth it. Everyone will look at you as someone who couldn’t get anyone. Meaningfulness? Everyone knows that marriage and a family give a person meaning, right? All else is mere prelude. It’s the purpose of life. Emptiness? I’m sure I’ll feel better when I have accomplished the goal of getting married. I’ll have someone with whom to share my life, dreams, and experiences. Love? If you don’t marry, you’ll never have someone who sticks with you “for better or for worse, in sickness or in health,” who loves you for who you really are. Happiness? What about all those studies that are hauled out claiming that married people are happier? Marriage will end your unhappiness. Look at all those happily married couples! Manhood? Real men can get any woman, get a doll who’ll show what a jewel they can attract, and get a wife who’ll fulfill her role in bed and all around the house. Womanhood? If you don’t marry, what kind of woman are you? No one wants you. You must instead live as half a person till a partner makes you whole, proves you’re attractive enough, and give you self-approval. Your biological clock is ticking, don’t you know. You could miss your second chance to be fulfilled by mothering his children. Stop! This is too much weight for any relationship, any institution, to bear. But, more importantly, the messages that marriage is it make the need for everyone to marry desperate. Instead of looking at alternative relationships such as good friendships, instead of improving those we have, we let them fall by the wayside while we travel the road to the marriage altar. Instead of taking the time and gaining the wisdom needed to get to know people well enough to take or leave them, we jump at the chance of engagement as soon as it shows up. Instead of leaving a potential partner before we go down the aisle when we should recognize the signs that this person isn’t the one who’ll support our passions in life, we ignore signs, and our friends’ advice (if they’re brave enough to give it), and plan the ceremony. Instead of saying goodbye to a spouse because a mistake was made and the marriage isn’t a healing opportunity for both of us, in our desperation to be married we cling tighter because we’re too afraid to be alone or that we’ll never find another. When we make the unmarried state -- with friends as valued as highly as spouses -- as enviable and rewarding as any married one is supposed to be, we’ll have taken the first step toward “saving” marriage. © 2010 Robert N. Minor Other Issues, Books, Resources
Robert N. Minor is the author of Scared Straight: Why It's So Hard to Accept Gay People and Why It's So Hard to Be Human and Gay & Healthy in a Sick Society and Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. He may be reached through www.fairnessproject.org
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